


We Stand Together

by navaan



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexuality, Fade to Black, Getting Together, Multi, POV Female Character, Polyamory, Season 04, Sort of fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-14 23:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13601211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Madi sees the signs and plans a new tomorrow.





	We Stand Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



> You can follow me for fic updates on [tumblr](https://navaanwrites.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/navaanwrites). This fic has a post on the tumblr [here](https://navaanwrites.tumblr.com/post/171915363758/we-stand-together-navaan-black-sails-archive) in case you want to share it.

John returns to her and she's overwhelmed. Until now their love belonged to the two of them alone; a heat to be shared in the privacy of her hut or his rooms – away from prying eyes. But John returns to her from the sea, a lost one returned, and the moment her gaze meets his propriety is the last thing on her mind. 

Holding back for the sake of propriety, killing your feelings to live up to the ideals of a society that keeps slaves, pretending any of it mattered when – it's for the salons and ball rooms of English men and ladies.

Out here it's not for other people to judge who she loves and who loves her back with all their heart, she thinks when she throws herself into his arms and tastes the sweet kisses she thought were forever lost to her. 

“I thought I'd never see you again,” she whispers, trying to find her equilibrium and calm again. Too much is at stake, too much needs to be done and she has people to lead, people to care for. But now John is here and that means someone will share the burden of war that rests on her shoulders, just as she has offered to share the burdens he's taken onto his own.

He doesn't know yet that Billy has designed a new burden for him.

_But he is alive._

“You came back to me, John Silver.”

The thought is colored by her relief. With John her lover has returned, bruised and exhausted, held up more by his iron will than the crutch. 

“Never doubt it. I'll always come back to you. I am a very lucky man, and I know it,” he says and holds her, pressing her against his chest, bringing their brows together.

She wraps her arms around him just as tightly and rest her chin on his shoulder. It gives her a good view of the men who have brought him back to her. Flint has stopped to watch them quietly. She does know the two men of Flint's crew – of _John_ 's crew – by name, but has seen them before. They are trusted. The gruff and dangerous looking man beside them has never crossed her path before. 

Her eyes stray to Flint, searching.

He's the important ally here.

For some painful days it has been her and Flint leading this war without John to mediate and he's shown her that he is a worthy of her trust. Even when John was gone their truce held, despite Billy's betrayal and the lingering strain. 

_Despite both of us dealing with the loss._

She could have easily resented him for pushing them to move onward, but he had shared her grief.

Right now Flint's face is a schooled mask as he watches the two of them. He looks at John's back as if he's focusing on a point there between John's shoulder blades, his curls – or a moment far in the past. She has wondered for a long time why it is these men are keeping each other's counsel as they are – pushing and pulling and keeping each other in check or going far beyond any reasonable limits together. 

When John pulls out of Madi's embrace, and she has to let him go because there are too many things they need to talk about if they are to retake Nassau and set the new world aflame, John turns around to face his captain. And Flint's expression changes to a reserved but happy smile.

Something about it is sad, but relieved.

James Flint has a nod for her too. It's in the kindness that Madi sees it again: the pull of the darkness.

And John steps right towards it, unafraid or drawn in by it, to ask Flint: “Where are we at? What's the plan?”

“We,” Flint says, “are going to take Nassau.”

There she sees it for the first time: the way these two talk to each other, move around each other, in straight lines and yet in circles; not because it wasn't there before – she realizes now that it has always been there. 

In the beginning she made the promise to help John not to be taken by the same darkness that has eaten away at Flint for years, has pushed its claws into him and driven him to do despicable things. She doesn't want the cruelty, the savagery for John. She still thinks this can be her role. She can be his strength and light, when he needs it. 

But over the course of days things have shifted. 

Madi has grieved. 

Madi has seen the kind of cruelty she wanted her people to never suffer again.

A piece of darkness has touched her too.

* * *

“We need to watch Hands,” Flint says to Madi under his breath, when John, who has learned to rely more on his crutch through the absence of the boot, walks away from them, back turned, the thudding of wood against wood echoing even after they don't see him anymore.

She inclines her head, but doesn't speak, inviting Flint to says his part.

“Billy wants John to betray me. I'm not afraid of it. But I'd rather not let someone put even more strain on him now.”

“You think Hands is influencing John?”

Flint gives her one of his half-wicked smiles. “Right now I think John is working his own influence on Mr. Hands. I've seen it before.”

“But that is how the two of you formed an alliance before, isn't it?” 

She knows. John has told her much about his history with Flint even though sometimes he doesn't use so many words. He keeps things to himself sometimes when the words flow the quickest. She doesn't push at his secrets, takes what he thinks he can share.

Flint laughs, and it's much too relaxed for someone who is worried about another man's betrayal. Right now he wants to believe John won't stray from his side – and Madi realizes that by extension that means _Madi_ 's side.

“I admit,” Flint muses, “I do fear he's already part of the stories. Bily's. Nassau's. He's always been part of his own stories, making himself part of whatever bloody story he picked. I never got to the heart of that. It's not unusual for a man in this life to have cut himself lose from the life he led before the , but I'm not sure I know _anything_ of truth about John Silver before he came onto my ship.”

 

Madi pretends to watch the bustling room around them, but she's highly aware of Flint in this moment. He doesn't want to pry at John's secrets, because he is made of secrets himself. His reputation is largely built like the reputation of Long John Silver. 

_He's trying to know John as an equal. He needs John as much as John needs him._

It's the second time she sees it – and only because they shared their grief when John had not returned from the sea at first can she appreciate all things that Flint _doesn't_ say.

_He yearns to understand you, John. As you yearn to understand him._

And there is more to it.

She's beginning to see.

 _She_ is beginning to understand both of them.

* * *

“The lady he lived with in that house was called Miranda Hamilton,” John explains to her at night, when they lie in bed and she asks her questions quietly, while resting his head on John's chest. “They called her Mrs. Barlow here.”

“You said her loss was what guided him into this war?”

“Her murder,” John corrects. “I imagine he made a promise to protect her and now she is another person England took from him.”

“Who is the other?” Because there is another dark spot in this story that Madi has not touched yet, _hasn't been touched by yet_ , a shadow hanging over everything. A shadow that hides in the depths of Flint's eyes and the sadness of his smile when it's the most truthful.

She rests her head on John's chest and hears the small chuckle building up like a rumble through his body. “Her husband,” he says and never elaborates. “It's Flint's story to tell. I just remembered, because he said you carried yourself like her.”

Husband.

Wife.

And a lover.

In the dim darkness of their room she listens to John's breathing evening out as he slips into sleep, to pirates moving around outside their door, and ponders this. The darkness in Flint makes sense now. What would she do if she lost John again? What would _he_ do if he ever lost her? 

And what would John do without Flint?

Perhaps the answer to the darkness has always been right there in the story she hasn't been told - of husband, wife and lover.

* * *

She notices the way Israel Hands talks to John while throwing warning glances in Flint's direction. It's easy to read how Billy has poisoned the atmosphere but has not yet ended this complicated, fragile thing between John and Flint that is made of friendship, loyalty and secrets. John stands by her and by Flint because this is where he longs to be as much as it's a necessity. She tastes it in his kisses, hears it in the cadence of his voice when he convinces others to stand with him. But sometimes, when John thinks nobody sees him, then the shadowy fog of darkness sneaks into his usually bright blue eyes. It's different from the fog of pain that sometimes clouds his features and different from the doubt of someone who thinks he's not winning a war, but more like the darkness in someone who ponders survival every minute of his life. People who find sanctuary in the maroon camp after decades of abuse have that look sometimes that tells of the pain, the suffering - and the inability to trust that a good life can be more than temporary.

Madi knows she can't kiss it away.

And even more importantly, she knows Flint sees it too. 

He teaches John to fight - without the boot and while using the crutches. 

"Does he ever tell you?" Flint asks her, after both men return and John leaves them to rest his strained muscles in a bath.

"Tell me?" She wonders if Flint wants her to reveal the assurances of love John bestows upon her in private, in their bed, but then she gets a good look at him and realizes he's talking about something else.

"Where he came from? What his life was like before?"

"Before?" she asks. "Like mine or yours?"

Flint turns fully to train his eyes on her and there it is again - the understanding. In the camp, before the war, before working closely with him, Madi was unable to see it, but in some way she and Flint are more alike than John Silver and James Flint. She wonders if John realizes it. "Yes, before he came out to be a sailor and a pirate." She doesn't smile, but allows him to see her amusement. "He never wanted to be a sailor or a pirate." Flint smiles, amused and disconcerted at the same time. Emotions have a way of showing in his eyes more than on his face even when he's angry and Madi watches closely. "He knows my secrets. All of them. The ones that matter to me and my life and those I loved." She recognizes his words as the explanation it's supposed to be and nods. Then she says: "I never ask him about the past that sent him to me. He's who he is now - the man I fell in love with. He was a different man before he lost the leg. He told me so freely." "Does it not... concern you?" "That he has secrets? No it does not. I know him. And yet I do not. But neither does he know what it is to be me. And yet he knows me." Flint stares at her. "He is lucky," he says, "that he has found this with you." Despite his look he still emanated concern. "But you think it is also a danger." Flint shrugs and smiles, the saddest smile she's ever seen. "I've lived with secrets. They threaten to consume you." _What has love done to you she thinks._ John walks into the room and Flint's eyes follow his every move and naturally John gravitates towards him in turn - despite Israel Hands at his heels trying to slow him down. John sees her and his eyes light up even brighter. She's beginning to understand the darkness that comes with their war. In the beginning she told John she would pull him back when Flint's darkness threatened to consume him too. She offered to walk the path into darkness with him – and then back. And perhaps that is where all of them would find their answers. In the darkness. 

* * *

Madi is her mother's daughter. She has learned loyalty and duty, she has learned gratitude and clemency. Prepared to rule her people with foresight, she was now in this war to fight for a new world that seems unimaginable and yet possible.

Like the two men she fights beside she knows about strategy.

And she has her own plans and visions of a better future.

When the knock on their door comes, she's dressed in a clean white underdress that serves as a nightgown. John sits by the fire, his hair falling across his bare beg in long dark locks. 

"It is Flint," she says and goes to open, barefooted and unconcerned, but John's eyes widen and he pulls the crutch towards himself. 

Madi isn't surprised by this.

She _asked_ Flint to come to their rooms - to discuss the future.

When he sees her his eyes widen too. 

She smiles.

In here just like out there, she is a queen, and these men respect her for it - and yet they forget.

"I can come back another..." Flint starts and his eyes find John's surprised gaze by the fireside. It's not the fire sending sparks and she's amused, when John swallows and looks away and Flint forgets what he was about to say and clears his throat.

Everything is playing out as she has imagined it.

"Come in. Join us," Madi says and opens the door wider, makes it clear she wants him here.

Flint hesitates, shares a look with her and then with John. She has pulled back the sheets from the bed to make her intentions clear and his eyes glide over them, nervously.

"I came here assuming we would make plans for tomorrow."

John raises an eyebrow at Madi and she smiles wider and sits on the edge of the bed. In answer John's eyes shine bright, lit up by the fire, but she knows it's also the curves of her breasts under the white linen of her nightgown - and the fact that Flint is here, has entered the room, is standing close to John now by the fire.

Flint sits down beside him on a small chair. 

"It seems Madi is planning for a longer tomorrow," John offers.

Right before Flint kisses him.

The bonds that tie them together will strengthen here and set them free. 

She lets herself fall back to the bed with a smile, waits for the men to join her there.

They are not to repeat the past, but to create a future.


End file.
